WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B.
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 165
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KROOOOOOOOAR!
A majestic roar rang out, shaking the entire world.
The air trembled.
The ground shook.
The mana in the atmosphere scattered as if in confusion.
The overwhelming noise went beyond the physical world, shaking even the spiritual realm.
I frowned.
“Again? Dragon-Fear Season 2, huh.”
Loud as hell.
Still, I could put up with it.
It felt like someone was scratching at my ears, so it was irritating, but not unbearably so.
Maybe it was because I had suffered through noise from upstairs neighbors when I lived in a semi-basement apartment. I had built up a certain resistance to being tormented by sound.
Unfortunately, my companions did not seem to share that resistance.
“Fuck... shit...”
“...”
-Iing...!
Choi Yejin was trembling as she gripped her bow.
Ms. Hyeji had frozen stiff.
Iing Iing, perched on Hyeji’s shoulder, hugged herself and curled up in fear.
I shielded her with my hand.
“Iing Iing, it’s okay. I’m here.”
-Iing...
Seemingly reassured, Iing Iing stopped trembling.
A moment later, the roaring subsided.
“Gasp. Huff...”
“Phew... I thought my heart was going to stop...”
Only then did my party members begin to let out sighs of relief.
I clicked my tongue.
“Seriously, Ms. Yejin and Ms. Hyeji, neither of you has any resistance to noise pollution. This is why everyone needs to live in a semi-basement apartment at least once. Once you’ve suffered through noise from upstairs, you’ll know this is nothing!”
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
“Live in a semi-basement for just one month. This level of noise pollution will feel like nothing, I’m telling you! Dong-do-tot-to, dong-do-tot-to, it’s so damn loud!!!”
Dragon-Fear was nothing compared to noise from upstairs!
Maybe because they were rich bastards who had lived in fancy high-rise apartments or mansions, my party members could not stand loud noise.
How pathetic.
Anyway.
“Let’s head to the city first.”
If that thing kept roaring, the people in the city could not possibly be okay.
As the mayor of my city, I had a duty to relieve my citizens’ suffering from noise pollution!
“Let’s hurry!”
“Mr. Jiho is always so energetic...”
We headed for the city by telekinetic flight.
My party members followed behind, already looking exhausted.
* * *
When we reached the city, we met Valdemar at the northern gate.
He had been giving orders to the soldiers, but when he spotted me, he came running over in a panic.
“Angel! You have returned!”
“Yes. Deputy mayor. I have descended. How much time has passed this time? Report.”
“One day has passed, since you rebuilt the city walls yesterday.”
“...One day? Only one day?”
It really had become one day now.
The Tower used to skip ahead by half a year or even several years.
Then, at some point, the intervals had gradually shortened.
This time, only a single day had passed.
But what had happened during that day was anything but ordinary.
I pointed beyond the city walls and asked.
“Why is it such a mess outside after only one day? It looked like a volcanic wasteland.”
“The northern ground shook violently during the night. The earth split open, and red water began gushing from the cracks.”
“It didn’t flow in from far away?”
“That is correct. It rose from land that had been perfectly normal. Now, most of the area beyond the walls is like that...”
Valdemar bit his lip.
He seemed worried about the city’s safety as the volcanic contagion spread by the moment.
He continued in a trembling voice.
“Thanks to the walls you built, Angel, the lava has not yet entered the city. But if red water continues rising from the ground like this... someday, it may reach inside the walls...”
“Hmm.”
I turned to inspect the walls.
Wall-Baek Jiho and Wall-Iing Iing Mark II were both intact.
The fields and waterways within them were safe as well.
But Valdemar was right.
Lava flowing in from outside could be stopped by the walls.
There was no way to stop lava rising from the ground beneath our feet with the walls.
No one knew when lava might burst up from under them, so it was only natural that they were afraid.
Then Valdemar continued.
“And... Angel. The soldiers watching the north claim they saw something strange.”
“Something strange? What was it?”
“Wings. They said enormous wings moved through the smoke above the volcano. They were... far too large to be a Wyvern.”
“Wings.”
I looked north.
Only black smoke covered the sky.
“And above all...”
Valdemar clenched and unclenched his fist.
His fingertips were trembling.
“That cry. It has been heard continuously since last night. Whenever it sounds, everyone freezes. They cannot even breathe properly...”
“...”
“I am no different. Every time I hear it, my heart stops. Terror rises within me, so intense that I feel I cannot move even a finger. I wonder if I might die like this...”
Valdemar’s voice gradually grew quieter.
This was the first time I had seen him so terrified.
He was always calmly delivering reports with stacks of documents in his arms.
Then, at that very moment.
KROOOOOOOOAR!
Another roar came from the north.
Thud.
A merchant at a stall near the gate collapsed where they stood.
A woman holding her child stopped breathing.
A soldier guarding the gate dropped their spear.
Clang!
The fallen spear rang against the ground.
Then a suffocating silence settled over everything.
It was so quiet that even the wind seemed to have stopped.
“Ghk...!”
“Urgh...”
“Gasp...!”
The people of the city stood frozen, clutching their chests, holding their breath, their eyes trembling.
All hundreds of thousands of people living here had stopped moving in that instant.
Dragon-Fear had filled them with such extreme terror that their bodies had frozen.
Then, at that very moment.
“Do not fear!”
I raised my staff.
Then I clicked Holy Magic.
Flash!
I stirred up mana and scattered divine magic.
Golden radiance bloomed from the tip of my staff.
A warm, gentle halo of light burst forth, scattering bright rays everywhere.
Then I shouted.
“Do not fear! Do not weep! Your mayor, your Angel, is here! I shall personally go north and teach that squawking noise-polluting bastard a lesson!”
The warm light I released melted through the space around us.
Soon, the frightened people began to relax one by one.
Emotion and relief filled their faces.
“Angel...”
“That’s right. We have the Angel.”
The city’s citizens loosened their frozen bodies and looked at me with tearful, moved eyes.
Then, at that very moment.
Sparkle!
The space above my head lit up.
Already?
I raised my head to look up.
Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle, sparkle, sparkle, sparkle, sparkle!
A massive Halo had appeared above my head, scattering brilliant light.
The city’s citizens looking at me went wild.
“The Halo!”
“The Angel has revealed heaven’s will!”
“The Angel protects us!”
“WAAAAAAAH!”
The people regained their strength and erupted into cheers.
Hmm.
At this point, they would not fall into fear anymore!
I pointed my staff north.
“Time to process a dragon complaint...!”
Extreme Lunatic Hell Heaven Angel-Mayor.
Has descended upon this place!
* * *
Ppororong.
We headed north.
The moment we left the city, a red wasteland spread before us.
Lava flowed like rivers.
The roads that had remained until yesterday, even the lower portions of rocky mountains, had all been submerged in red liquid.
Even so, we could advance north without trouble.
I muttered quietly.
“Those ordinary American pedestrians who tried to clear Floor 50 must have suffered terribly. They had to break through a lava field like this... This is why people need their own cars.”
-Iing!
“You need at least one flying personal car! People should not primitively crawl around stuck to the ground!”
Traveling through the air made things extremely comfortable.
Iing Iing had Iing Iing’d again!
Then Ms. Hyeji spoke.
“Flying cars came out recently.”
“?”
“Mr. Jiho, didn’t you watch the news? Their stock briefly rebounded because of it. Of course, it crashed again afterward...”
What was she talking about?
How could a car fly?
She was saying something ridiculous.
“Ms. Hyeji, you’ve finally lost your mind from obsessing over stocks. Take a break from trading. This is a serious stock addiction.”
“No, it’s real. They announced it recently. It’s called the Tisla Roadster...”
“Silence! How could Elon Mengsk, with technology too pathetic to even keep up with fairy self-driving, make a ridiculously cool flying car? Stop talking nonsense and focus on the clear!”
“No, but-”
Leaving Ms. Hyeji behind as she babbled nonsense, we continued north.
The farther north we went, the more severe the environment became.
Lava bubbled up from the ground.
The sulfurous smoke grew thicker.
Eventually, the smoke became so dense that we could barely see.
As we traveled northward, I saw something strange.
Rumble...
The land had been completely ruined by lava and sulfur smoke.
The mana veins within that land itself were moving.
The dried, tree-root-like strands that stretched deep beneath the earth were being dragged north, as if someone on the other side were pulling them.
And wherever the mana veins were pulled away.
Bubble!
Lava began boiling up.
I nodded.
“Now I understand why lava is rising from the ground. Something is dragging the mana veins themselves away.”
It was not because a volcano had erupted.
The land could not endure having its mana veins ripped out, so it vomited up underground lava.
It was kind of like pimples breaking out on stressed skin.
I clicked my tongue.
“Seriously, there are so many greedy environmental criminals. Daesik tried to completely kimchi the continent’s mana, and now there’s a Dragon sucking up mana veins? They just keep finding new ways to cause trouble...!”
My irritation and anger toward environmental criminals surged up.
Maybe I should take out my frustration on Daesik when I got home.
Anyway, that made finding the way easy.
We only had to follow the direction the mana veins were being dragged.
And so.
We crossed countless terrains.
We passed through land ruined by volcanoes, the valley where the egg had been yesterday, and a blackened, dead wasteland.
At last, we reached an enormous volcano.
I raised my head and studied it for a moment.
Then my party members began speaking.
“That volcano is huge...”
“Seriously. The summit is hidden by clouds. How can a mountain be that big?”
It was an enormous, majestic mountain.
No.
Rather than a mountain, it was closer to a wall.
The slope, layered with hardened black lava, was rough like the shell of some gigantic beast.
The peak was wrapped in black smoke and clouds, completely out of sight.
Rumble...
Every so often, the entire mountain rumbled low.
As if something enormous were breathing.
And the strands of mana veins dragged in from all directions were climbing the mountain toward its summit.
“It must be up there.”
The mana veins squirmed toward the summit.
The boss monster had to be up there!
“Iing Iing. Let’s go up slowly.”
-Iing...!
Ppororong.
Iing Iing began gaining altitude along the mountainside.
The sulfur smoke thickened.
Our field of vision narrowed more and more.
Then, at last.
The instant we broke through the veil of smoke and reached the area near the summit, we saw it.
“...”
The first thing we saw was the volcano’s crater.
It was a massive hole.
A pit wide enough to hold an entire city and still have room left over.
And in the center of that crater.
There was an unimaginably huge black mass.
At first, I thought it was just a large rock.
I assumed it was some chunk of stone lodged in the middle of the crater.
But it was not.
Flap!
That massive black mass suddenly spread its wings wide.
Whoooosh!
A violent gust rose with the flap of its wings, blowing away all the acrid smoke in an instant.
As our vision cleared, its full body was revealed.
Huge forelegs braced within the crater.
A thick neck.
Horn-like protrusions running from the back of its neck all the way to its tail.
And wings spread wide behind its back, covering half the crater!
“Holy fuck, that is unbelievably cool.”
“Are you fucking insane? Why is it actually a Dragon?! Why is there a Dragon in the Tower, goddammit?! Aren’t clichés supposed to subvert obvious things?! Why is it really a Dragon?!”
“Mr. Jiho... are we really going to fight that?”
-Iing Iing Iing Iing Iing...
Choi Yejin stared in shocked despair.
Ms. Hyeji whined fearfully.
Iing Iing burrowed into my arms with a frightened expression.
But I was sorry to say that I could not spare any attention for my party members.
Because it was a Dragon!
A real, genuine Dragon straight out of a fantasy novel had appeared in the crater!
How could I not be captivated?
It was unbelievably majestic!
And my heart became majestic too!
As an avid fantasy novel reader, seeing a real Dragon made my heart race!
My Dragon obsession was surging...!
How great would it be if I could make it my pet and ride around on it immediately?
But...
Unfortunately.
That thing was not my pet.
It was just an environmental criminal trying to suck my city dry.
So I raised my staff and shouted.
“You have appeared, environmental criminal! Hero Red will deal with you!”
“Mr. Jiho! We need to run right now! There is absolutely no way we can beat-”
“Bullet hell is firepower!”
The first strike wins!
One blow, one kill!
Magic artillery, Final Spark, fire!
KABOOOOOOOM!
A bright burst of light erupted.
A massive pillar of light charged toward it.
Even if it was a Dragon...
Once it got hit by magic artillery, it would not be able to move!
Magic-artillery-hit, cannot-move!
I was certain I would suppress it in one strike.
Thoom!
“Nani?!”
I had no choice but to be shocked.
The space directly in front of it rippled.
Then it effortlessly deflected my magic artillery!
I was stunned.
‘That... could it be spatial magic?!’
That rippling space looked exactly like spatial magic.
Could it use spatial magic?
Was that why it had so easily deflected my magic artillery?
As I stared at it in surprise, its massive head slowly turned toward me.
Golden eyes.
The vertically slit pupils at their center reflected me.
「...You. You are one who came from “outside.”」
The voice was not spoken aloud. It reached me through my soul.
Its deep voice shook my very soul.
「What business does a living one have in this false world?」
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